Moving to the Cloud
US hospitals have been slow to adopt the cloud due to security fears, but the tide has turned. The benefits of **Cloud Computing** (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) now far outweigh the risks of on-premise data centers.
1. Scalability and Elasticity
During the pandemic, telehealth usage spiked 100x. Cloud infrastructure allowed platforms to scale up instantly to handle the load, and scale down afterwards to save costs.
2. Disaster Recovery
On-premise servers are vulnerable to floods, fires, or power outages. The cloud offers geo-redundancy; if a data center in Texas fails, the system fails over to Virginia instantly, ensuring zero downtime.
3. Advanced Analytics
Cloud providers offer powerful AI/ML tools ‘as a service’. Hospitals can dump data into a data lake and run complex population health queries that would choke a local server.
4. Cost Model
Moving from CapEx (buying servers) to OpEx (paying for usage) frees up capital for medical equipment and staff.
Summary
The cloud isn’t just a place to store data; it’s an innovation engine. It allows US healthcare providers to be agile in a rapidly changing regulatory and technological landscape.
